Make The Right Satellite Phone System Work For You
There are 3 satellite phone systems that are in operation at the moment and those 3 are: Thuraya, Globalstar and Iridium. You will also find that the 3 mentioned phone systems adopt their own unique approach of the technology they use. Let’s take a look at the 3 satellite phone systems and hopefully you can make up your mind to which system will be okay and work perfectly for you.
Let’s start with the most popular system, Iridium – the one system that helped many people connect during the America’s darkest days in 2001. This system makes use of 66 LEO satellites. These satellites are low-orbiting, orbiting only a couple hundred miles in space. The orbiting time of these satellites are only a 100 minutes. Apart from these satellites, there are many other satellites that are in orbit and should any fail, these will replace them. The satellites used by this system can be found in the polar orbits. This means that the satellites are orbiting our Earth from the North Pole to the South Pole, and vice versa. This term is referred to “Walker Star”. This popular system makes use of four Earth Stations. Backhaul routes in spaces send the telephone calls you make through space to a downlink and this is known as a feeder link.
The next is the Globalstar satellite phone system. The approach in this system is different from the one above. It reduces the complexity and also the running costs and the setting up. It only uses 48 satellites and these have an inclination of around 52 degrees. The satellites can be found orbiting the Earth twice as far out as the system above. Globalstar satellites only need 2 hours to complete its orbit. Globalstar does not support inter-linking, where the above system does. This means that Globalstar does not cover worldwide.
Thuraya is different to the above satellite phone systems. This is a regional system and the operations can be found in United-Arab Emirates. This system provides users in Africa, Middle East and Europe with coverage. This is achieved when the system uses only one geostationary satellite. The service is provided through many network service providers.
You will find that you will not be able to use the Thuraya handset with any other network. This is a specialized service. Thuraya allows its users to make use of a dual-mode operation. This means that users don’t only have to use the system via their satellite, but can also use it when connecting to the GSM-900 networks.
There you have the 3 known satellite systems. Whichever you are interested in, whether to purchase or rent. You will find payment options | plans if you are interested in purchasing your own satellite phone for the next time you take that cruise with the family. There are also rentals | plans offered when if you are interested in getting a phone for the weekend out. It is always wise to research the satellite phone systems thoroughly to be sure it will work for you.
